Hacker Wonderland: DefCon 18 in Photos

LAS VEGAS — Roughly 10,000 computer hacking enthusiasts, poseurs, geeks, nerds and government agents gathered for DefCon last weekend. In its 18th year, the world’s largest hacker convention draws people from all walks of life to learn about the latest hacking techniques.

The talks weren’t the only events of interest. There were dozens of popular contests, fundraisers and parties.

DefCon has a long history of either outgrowing or being thrown out of various hotels. This year marked the final year at the Riviera Hotel, which has been straining to accommodate the annually increasing crowds.

DefCon organizer Jeff Moss, aka Dark Tangent, announced the new venue during the closing ceremony. Next year’s DefCon will be held at the Rio, which has a much larger conference center along with more restaurants, bars and guest rooms than the Riviera.

Here’s a look at some of the highlights of DefCon 18.

Above: The official DefCon badge (second from left) isn’t the only electronic neckwear offered at the convention. Limited-edition breathalyzer badges (left) from the Null Space Labs hacker space in Los Angeles were given to some attendees. The 303 hacking crew from Colorado gave out badges to their members (second from right), and the Ninja Networks gave out badges for their exclusive party (right).

Challenge coins are limited-edition tokens of membership in an organization. They are traded between hackers, feds and military folk as a sign of appreciation.

Their usefulness becomes obvious at the bar in what is one of the military’s oldest drinking games. If a member of a unit presents his challenge coin when he is drinking with others they must all produce their coins as well. Whoever doesn’t have a coin has to buy. If everyone has a coin, the person who first took theirs out has to buy. Clockwise from left: DHS, CIA, DOD, DefCon, Ninja Networks, Joint Chiefs of Staff-Pentagon.

Winners of the harder contests at the convention recieve an Über badge, granting them access to DefCon for life. The Über badges shown are about to be presented to contest winners at the closing ceremony.

The Korean team in traditional garb competes in the Capture the Flag contest. The teams gain points by hacking in to servers and keeping control of those servers. The competitors work in shifts and stay up all night trying to win.

DefCon volunteer Cal positions an antenna for the cellphone-eavesdropping talk on Saturday. The convention is run almost entirely by volunteers, known as goons, who do everything from security to speaker wrangling to setting up and running the network.

A mask covered with an encrypted message from Edgar Allen Poe is one clue for the Mystery Challenge, which Wired.com has covered previously. Considered by many to be the most difficult contest of the whole convention, the Mystery Challenge covers many hacker skills including lockpicking, hardware hacking, cryptography and programming. This year’s was the final Mystery Challenge, but organizer Lost will be creating a new contest for Defcon in the future.

Computer security professional Vyrus competes in the Capture the Packet contest. A new contest for Defcon 18, CTP was created by Riverside, who also runs the always popular Wall of Sheep. The contestants are given captured network traffic, and their job is to reassemble the message hidden inside the data.

The infamous Wall of Sheep lists usernames and obfuscated passwords for DefCon attendees who were unlucky enough to send out their login information unecrypted over the conference’s wireless network. The most common services on the Wall of Sheep this year were Twitter and Foursquare.

A number of relatively ancient computers were on display in the Old School Computing room. The best part was that all the computers were working, and attendees were encouraged to log in and play around.